Breaking Point (HFC18)
Summary: Roman has absolutely no intention of ever revealing to his three best friends and housemates, who are now dating, that he’s in love with all of them as well. Fortunately, things do not go as planned. An extended metaphor ensues.
Relationships: Roman/Patton/Virgil/Logan
Warnings: brief mention of death
Word count: 1180
Roman heard the metaphorical ice creak beneath his feet the second he walked into the living room. Patton and Virgil and Logan were already in there, cuddling on the couch sipping hot chocolate while Patton played some video game and the other two offered encouragement and advice. Clearly they were having couple- well, triad bonding time. Clearly, Roman should stay out of their way and go right back to his room. Just like he’d been doing every other time he saw the three of them together in the past few weeks. The warning signs in his head couldn’t have been any clearer: danger, thin ice! Stay away!
It wasn’t fair, he thought, as he hovered at the edge of the warm aura they always seemed to give off. It wasn’t fair that they’d all somehow managed to get together during the few days Roman had been away last month. It wasn’t fair that they kept trying to get him to do things with them anyway, as if they didn’t think it would be unbearably awkward, as if they didn’t realize his avoiding them was for the best. It wasn’t fair that he found himself moving so carefully in his own home to keep them from noticing how completely, hopelessly in love with all of them he was, and had been for ages.
Yes, he should definitely go back upstairs. Standing here admiring his crushes from the other side of the room wasn’t going to help anything. Maybe he would be able to get over them eventually if he stayed away, although his romantic soul said he would more likely keep pining forever and leave a beautiful handwritten letter for them to find after his death, in which he would finally confess his true feelings, and it would all be extremely tragic because they would realize they’d loved him all along now that it was too late, but also if they didn’t feel the same way he wouldn’t be alive to get rejected. (That last bit was the only reason he hadn’t decided to try writing them a letter before dying.) He may have gotten slightly lost in the fantasy, which was why he didn’t realize they had noticed him leaning in the doorway until someone called his name.
“Uh… Earth to Roman?”
He jumped and looked up, feeling even less stable than before.
“Are you… feeling alright?”
“You were just staring into space, we got kinda worried!”
Oh, lovely, now he had all of them looking concerned. He couldn’t very well tell them what he’d been thinking about. “No need to worry, my dear friends,” he assured. “Just daydreaming again, you know me! Struck by inspiration on my way to the kitchen, and I couldn’t very well ignore it, could I?” He turned in that direction. It would be safer in the kitchen, less chance of the ground collapsing under him at any moment. “I’ll just grab a snack and be on my way now.”
“Aw, Ro, why don’t you take a break and join us?”
Oh, come on, not now! Not when he was already emotional over them… although, to be fair, that was most of the time. “I can’t,” he pleaded without turning around, hoping Patton wouldn’t push it any further. He could feel the cracks beginning to grow under his feet; he needed to get out of here. “I’m- simply too busy at the moment.”
“At the moment?” Out of the corner of his eye, Roman could see that Virgil was standing now. “How about every time we’ve tried to do anything with you for the past month? Did you think we weren’t gonna notice?”
“I didn’t- it’s not on purpose,” he protested weakly.
“It’s fairly obvious that you have been avoiding us ever since…” Logan’s eyes narrowed as he looked over his shoulder at Roman, and the cracks spread. “Ever since the three of us entered into a relationship.”
Virgil stepped forward as if to defend the other two from him, and oh, Roman was not prepared for how much that hurt. “Do you have a problem with-“
“No! No, I, of course not!” He finally turned at that, hands up in a placating gesture.
“Then why?” Patton sounded quite upset, and he felt horrible for causing it. “We miss you, Roman, please just tell us what’s wrong so we can fix it!”
“It’s nothing!” he insisted. “Really! It’s just that- you’re all together,” he made a pushing-together motion with both hands to illustrate their current position, “and I don’t see anything wrong with it, I swear, it’s fine, but you- you don’t really want me in that, do you, we all know I would just get in the way of all your relationshippy stuff and it would be weird, so I don’t understand why you insist on constantly asking me to fourth-wheel you and making this so much harder than it needs to be!” His voice broke, but he wasn’t going to cry, the conversation was going badly enough as it was. He didn’t dare look any of them in the face. Would that be enough to convince them, that burst of unplanned honesty? Would they see, now, why they needed to let him stay away?
“…Oh, Roman.”
He opened his eyes- when had he closed his eyes? And since when were they standing right in front of him? Could he even move at this point without setting off a chain reaction that would ruin everything, or was he already doomed? …Was he breathing right now?
Patton made an aborted move to touch his face. Roman, feeling a bit dazed, made an equally aborted move to lean toward him, to let it happen. Patton hesitated a moment and then closed the gap, brushing a tear away with his thumb before it could fall. “Oh, Roman,” he said again, softly. “You love us, don’t you?”
Crack.
The sound may not have been real, but to Roman it was like a gunshot. It was the sound of the world finally, inevitably, shattering around him. He squeezed his eyes shut again as he fell, bracing himself. They flew open again in shock when rather than the freezing waters of rejection, he landed in the arms of three warm, non-metaphorical people.
“Wh…?”
“You’re an idiot,” Virgil muttered from his right side, hugging him tightly.
“Certainly not very observant,” agreed Logan from his left.
“We love you too, silly,” sighed a fondly exasperated Patton, who now had Roman’s face cradled in both hands. “We’ve been trying to get a chance to talk to you about it and you just wouldn’t let us!”
“I- I thought…” He blinked, shaking his head, and then laughed. “I really am an idiot.”
“Yup. But at least you’re our idiot.”
“Indeed.”
“We love you,” Patton said again, bumping their foreheads together for emphasis. A bit late he added, “Be nice, you two.”
Roman thought- although he knew better than to say it out loud- that he could get used to being called an idiot, as long as it came with a side of being theirs.
by: @do-your-socks-have-holes-in-them